At Abdullahpur Government Primary School in Akhaura area, in eastern Bangladesh’s Brahmanbaria district, the day begins with the stench of sewage wafting from an adjacent canal, Katakhal. Located in eastern Bangladesh’s Brahmanbaria district, the Akhaura channel makes up a stretch of about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of the cross-border Katakhal canal which originates in Agartala, the capital city of the Indian state of Tripura. After crossing the India-Bangladesh border at the border outpost, the canal flows for about 8 km (5 mi) through Bangladesh before draining into the Titas River. “We struggle to concentrate on lessons because of this disturbing odor. Teachers remain vigilant so that no child goes close to the canal,” Mahmuda Akhter, one of the schoolteachers, tells Mongabay. Mahmuda says she deplores the canal carrying pitch-black water year-round. She says she has not seen any remedy since she joined the school in 2013. It was reported in 2017 that the erstwhile kings of the princely state of Tripura originally created the channel to ferry goods to and from the Bangladeshi regions. After the countries’ partition in 1947, transportation stopped and the canal gradually turned into a drainage conduit for Agartala’s municipal and industrial waste. Some local people from Akhaura, like middle-aged farmers Jaan Miah and Nazrul Islam, say they have never seen the Katakhal water clean. Especially in the dry seasons, the water quality falls drastically, they say. The Bangladeshi government is concerned about the problem of water pollution by the cross-border channel. Periodically, the Border Guard…This article was originally published on Mongabay